Change of government: What could the new cabinet look like?

It is an iron rule for every government formation: the items are awarded at the end. The Union and SPD will also stick to this in the decisive phase of their coalition negotiations, which begins on Friday. However, it has long been discussed extensively behind the scenes about who could become what could become in a cabinet led by the expected Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU). Here is an overview of speculation.

How many posts are to be awarded at all?

There are currently 15 federal ministries, whose bosses belong to the cabinet under the direction of the Federal Chancellor. In addition, the Chancellor’s Office has the rank of Federal Minister. Together, 17 members in the original traffic light cabinet. After the FDP’s exit from the coalition, however, only 15 are left.

Does this number stay?

Almost every new government coalition has changed the cut of the ministries at one or several places. Since black and red, like the traffic lights, will write down the reduction in bureaucracy, it should no longer become ministries. Merz absolutely wants a digital ministry. To do this, would then have to be saved or fusion away.

Which ministries can be used for this?

In the negotiations, the Union demands that the development department be incorporated into the Federal Foreign Office. The SPD, which with Svenja Schulze is currently making the Minister of Development, is against it. An independent Ministry of Building and Living-also an SPD domain-is also considered dispensable in the Union. For example, it could work with traffic in an infrastructure ministry.

Which party gets how many posts?

Chancellor and Chancellor’s office chief are certainly provided by the strongest of the three government parties CDU. In 15 ministries, Formula 6-6-3 is the most likely: six ministries for the CDU and SPD and three for the CSU-even if some in the CDU would like to have more ministries than the SPD.

Department notification and the awarding of the ministries to the parties are usually already laid down in the coalition agreement. The choice of the parties afterwards is the choice of the people.

The central question at the SPD is: What does party leader Lars Klingbeil do? He could continue to have a say in the government course as the party and parliamentary group leader. However, it is more likely that he will become a vice -chancellor in the cabinet and that this position is headed for a candidacy for chancellor in 2029.

Klingbeil’s passion is foreign policy. Instead of the Federal Foreign Office, it should rather move into the much more powerful Ministry of Finance. There is another reason for this – and it is called Boris Pistorius. Minister of Defense, which is popular in Germany according to all surveys, wants to remain. The fact that the SPD receives both the external and the Ministry of Defense is considered excluded.

Who would then from the Union of Foreign Minister?

If Pistorius remains defense minister, the Chancellery and the Federal Foreign Office could be filled by the same party for the first time in almost 60 years, the CDU. Several names are circulating in the Union.

Ex-NRW Prime Minister Armin Laschet is considered to be very well networked with good contacts to France as Vice President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and former European Parliamentarians. The faction vice -President Johann WadePhul, the former head of the Federal Foreign Committee in the Bundestag, Norbert Röttgen, or the European Parliamentarian David McAllister are also given opportunities for the ministerial office.

Who else is in the race from the CDU for the cabinet?

Secretary General Carsten Linnemann is considered to be almost set for the Ministry of Economic Affairs. The parliamentary managing director of the Union faction, Thorsten Frei, is traded for three possible items: Interior Minister, Chancellor or faction leader. He is considered a loyal and confidant of Merz. Ex-Health Minister Jens Spahn is considered to be an altar syllable in the Union as well as the deputy CDU leader Andreas Jung, the group’s climate and energy expert.

And what about the CDU women?

The current Schleswig-Holstein Minister of Education Karin Prien is mentioned for the educational department. The Lower Saxony and deputy CDU chairman Silvia Breher can imagine several as a family minister or-should the CSU do without-as agricultural minister.

Who will be the top representative of the CSU in the cabinet?

The strongest CSU politician on the Berlin parquet is by far the state group leader Alexander Dobrindt. Expectations in his own party are correspondingly great that he changes to the cabinet. Whether Dobrindt, after his time as Minister of Transport from 2013 to 2017, now wants to become a minister again, he will be able to decide freely in the end. This is likely to be likely to get an important house, such as inside or economy.

Who else is set from the CSU?

The best chances are attributed to the former Digital Minister of State in the Chancellery, Dorothee Bär. For them, the Ministry of Research is mentioned as a conceivable department.

The bizarre is: The only one who was actually on CSU ticket is out: Bavaria’s farmers’ president Günther Felßner, whom CSU boss Markus Söder would have liked to have made a agricultural minister, has declared his retreat directly on his farm after a protest campaign of animal rights activists. Söder still wants to occupy the agricultural recess – possibly with the Bavarian department head Michaela Kaniber? Open.

Who from the SPD makes it into the cabinet next to “Klingorius”?

The SPD has a problem: it has too many ambitious men from Lower Saxony – especially Klingbeil and Pistorius. If Hubertus Heil Minister of Labor remained, it would be three. He can only hope that experience and popularity make regional proportional thinking.

The previous SPD ministers Wolfgang Schmidt (Chancellery) and Jörg Kukies (finances) are hardly given any chances of staying in the cabinet and Karl Lauterbach (Health) also has rather bad cards.

How many women sends the SPD into the cabinet?

Since the SPD will occupy its posts equally, it should amount to a maximum of three men and three women. Nancy Faeser will probably not remain the Minister of the Interior because her ministry will probably go to the Union. But she could switch to justice.

Svenja Schulze would like to remain development minister. Party leader Saskia Esken are also said to be ambitions on a cabinet post, but she has not only been under massive pressure since the election defeat.

The previous Bundag President Bärbel BAS is also one of the ministry women, who is also traded as a possible successor of Lars Klingbeil at the top of the parliamentary group.